Ex-SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach has slammed his former bandmates for claiming to have written all the songs on the group's early records without him, saying that all fans have to do is listen to the SKID ROW albums the band made after he was fired from the group to "know about who wrote what."Bach joined SKID ROW in 1988 as the replacement for the band's original lead singer Matt Fallon, who sang on demo versions of songs that were eventually re-recorded for SKID ROW's multi-platinum 1989 eponymous debut LP.During an appearance on the "Snider Comments" podcast with host Dee Snider of TWISTED SISTER, Bach stated about his former bandmates: "The biggest lie that those guys always tell is, 'We wrote all the songs on all the records.' If you listen to my albums and the SKID ROW albums, and then you listen to the SKID ROW albums without me, and then listen to my solo albums, that'll give you all that you need to know about who wrote what. When they say, 'We wrote the song '18 And Life', you [just] sang it.' Okay, let's examine that statement. You can go listen to the original version of that song online, and then you can listen to me doing it, and there's something called a melody line. Okay? Where it goes, [singing] 'Lived nine to five and he worked his fingers to the bone.' Every time my voice goes into the register where you turn it up and go, 'Holy shit! Did you fucking hear that?' Those are the notes that I wrote, okay? Nobody does that in the version before that I didn't fucking
'Can I sing this note in this part?' 'Yeah, do that, Sebastian. Yeah, do that.'"He continued: "So I'm nineteen years old, taking these fucking songs and turning them into JUDAS PRIEST songs, as far as
I'm rewriting the melody lines, never thinking anybody was gonna like it, never thinking anybody was gonna buy it. I'm thinking I'm gonna be the next MALICE, not the next BON JOVI. The last thing anybody ever thinks is that somebody is gonna like this shit. That was, like, the last-case scenario. So I'm not in court, saying, 'I wrote this note! I fucking
' I'm not gonna be in litigation when I'm nineteen. You know?! So, [them saying] 'We wrote all the songs' is such a fucking pile of shit."Asked by Snider if he thinks it's okay for some other singer to come and imitate his vocal and writing style and represent himself as the frontman of SKID ROW, Bach responded: "No. I think they should change the name of the band and leave
Like, VAN HALEN, okay, had Sammy [Hagar]
Well, they had Gary [Cherone]
. [Laughs] I forgot about that. But anyways, I would say, save the name of the band
I'm not saying that for me; I'm saying that for all of rock and roll."Bach went on to make a case for why the classic SKID ROW lineup should reunite. He said: "If you've got the five guys in the original band that are still alive, you should respect that because that is such a rare thing. Like, you guys [referring to Snider's TWISTED SISTER] just lost [drummer] A.J. [Pero], and now that [possibility of continuing with the classic lineup] doesn't exist anymore. And I walk around going, I ain't getting any fucking younger. I go, 'This is still possible.' So it's, like, [for the SKID ROW members] even to have that opportunity [to reunite the classic lineup] and deny it, or just say, 'Fuck it,' that's, like, bad for all of rock; that's not just bad for me."Sebastian also talked about the fact that he believes he is by far the most recognizable member of the classic SKID ROW lineup. He said: "The elephant in the room here is, like, when you [referring to Dee] and me walk down the street, Dee Snider and Sebastian Bach, we are the human beings that other human beings hang out the car window and go, 'Youth gone wild, motherfucker!' 'We're not gonna take it!' There's no other people
There's no other guy
Not one guy in SKID ROW walks down the street and can't walk down the fucking street. I can't walk down the street without people going, 'Fuck! What the fuck!' There's no [other] guy in the band that will ever have that; they never will. The public decides. It's like the show 'American Idol'. 'We're gonna pick an 'American idol'.' No, you're not. America is gonnna pick the fucking idol. America is the people that decide who the band is. You know what I'm saying?!"Asked in a 2013 interview with Metal Covenant if Bach "actually wrote anything significant on [SKID ROW's early] albums," SKID ROW guitarists Dave "Snake" Sabo responded: "To be totally honest, yeah. I mean, he contributed to things here and there. There is no doubt; you can't deny it. But to the extent that what Rachel [Bolan, bass] and I would put into a song, no. I mean, Rachel and I spent three months on 'Quicksand Jesus'. So to sit there and say that he didn't contribute anything, then I'd be lying. But to sit there and say that he contributed equally as we did, that would be a lie."In a 2010 interview, Bolan stated about SKID ROW's split with Sebastian: "There was so much tension and so much infighting that it was hard to write songs. Snake and I formed the band, we wrote the songs, and then other people played and sang it. People wanted to break away from what had been working, and that impeded the songwriting."Regarding the decision to reform SKID ROW in 1999 without Bach, Bolan said: "The blood was so bad after [1995's] 'Subhuman Race' and there was just so much stuff in the press, we knew it wasn't going to work [with Sebastian]. We decided we'd rather go on being happy with what we were doing than get right back into all the tension and dissension. We loved the music, we loved playing, and we knew we could do this and have fun again. So we decided right there to continue without him."SKID ROW recently fired its lead singer of the past fifteen years, Johnny Solinger, and replaced him with ex-TNT frontman Tony Harnell.
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